The Price of Dignity
by The Rainbow Ninjamaster
Summary: The Hunger Games strip away all humanity. Trin is no exception to this. District 11 - OC. Rated T and possible change to M for themes of inner conflict, insanity, and obvious violence during the Games


Living in District 11 was no picnic. Then again, trying to survive in any of the Districts in Panem was never easy. For Trin, this was doubly true. She just didn't know it yet.

Trin woke up at the same early hour she had been waking up for the past thirteen years of her life. She never had gotten used to waking up at the ungodly hour of 5:30 in the morning, but it spared her the wrath of the Peacekeepers who would punish her if she was not in the fields by six. Slowly and a bit lethargically, she picked herself up off of the bed and headed towards the kitchen table, which was both in and not in her room. The entire house where she lived was small and a bit cramped, with little to distinguish between rooms. At least their small, unsanitary restroom had walls.

Trin's father, Mikol, was sitting at the table already, pouring himself a cup of water with an old pitcher filled from the dirty little sink and putting a couple of mint leaves in it. Silently, Trin sat down at the table across from her father on one of their mismatched chairs. She grabbed a cup her father left sitting for her and poured herself the same water and put the same leaves in her cup. They both sat quietly at the table, drinking their almost tasteless mint tea. This was their daily routine; father and daughter sitting silent at the table drinking tea before the first rays of sunlight poked their way through the dusty windows.

After they finished drinking their tea, Kaila, Trin's mother, got up from her bed as if on cue and headed toward the small cupboard where they kept their food. She grabbed a handful of dried berries out of a box and split it in three: one part for her, one for Mikol, and one slightly larger portion for Trin. As usual, Trin refused the extra berries and gave them to her father, who needed more sustenance since he would be working the machinery in the fields today. The three of them, the entire Page family, ate their small breakfast in the kind of quiet that could be described as eerie. That is, if it were not what happened every day.

Finally, Trin broke the silence by scooting her chair back loudly, the legs dragging against the worn wood floor. She put her cup in the sink, which was every bit as run down as the other appliances in her house, and proceeded to the cubby that was their restroom. The door to the restroom creaked as Trin opened and closed it, and the toilet stared Trin in the face, its germ-covered lid smiling up at her. Trin shook her head and looked into the mirror.

A thin, pale-skinned girl stared back at her. Trin was one of the few lighter-skinned people in the entire District, and her pale skin made the dirt and dust that covered it to stand out even more. The thirteen-year-old's hair was long but stringy, an unpleasant strawberry-brown colour, showing that she had enough food to expend energy growing hair, but not enough to make it full and decent-looking. The dark brown eyes that bored into the mirror were the only quality that reminded everyone that this girl was a labourer in the fields, one of many teenagers working to provide for themselves and survive. Trin grimaced at her reflection – the only qualities that made her unique were the ones that made her stand out so terribly from the others.

Trin washed herself quickly with her family's meager soap ration and then changed into her patched up overalls, the uniform of all those in the agriculture district. She walked out of the restroom and walked straight to the front door of her house, grabbing the slightly oversized pair of boots that laid waiting for her. She pulled them on, laced them up, and was out the door without even saying a goodbye to her parents. It was 5:45, and Trin had a ten-minute walk to the fields in front of her.

The door to her family's house closed behind Trin, swinging slightly on its worn hinges. The house appeared shabbier on the outside than it did on the inside; here weather took its toll, wearing away any paint and decorations that once made the house look pleasant and welcoming to outsiders. But to Trin, it made the house look like home. To her, it screamed the truth of the conditions that those in District 11 faced. Although they produced the main food supply for Panem, the entire District – save for Victor's Village and Peacekeeper dwellings – was devastated in poverty and ugliness. Trin took one last look at her unhappy house before starting on her way to work, jogging briefly to catch up with a girl a few meters away.

"Hello Trin," said the girl. She had olive skin and neatly cut dark hair, with deep brown eyes. With her patchy overalls and too-small boots, she was a prime example of a typical kid in District 11. She had the look to her that said she grew up with too little resources and would probably continue to face this problem for the rest of her life.

"Nerissa," said Trin in return with a slight nod. "Bring anything good for lunch today?" The two girls often alternated between bringing lunches; it was easier on both of them.

"I have a bit of bread and some dried beans," replied Nerissa. "If you're sneaky enough, I bet we could steal a strawberry or two."

Trin shook her head, training her eyes on the ground. The last time Trin tried to take any food from the strawberry patch where they worked, she got caught by one of the Peacekeepers watching over them and got smacked across the face. She winced at the memory and put her hand over the cheek that got hit. Trin refocused her eyes on the ground, forcing her feet to stride across the asphalt road that was worn from her everyday traversing to the patch instead of looking up at the dark blue still-night sky.

The rest of their journey was spent in silence, as was their usual. They soon approached their patch at the same time as other workers, ranging from ages ten to sixty. Peacekeepers guarded the entry into the patch, and a few were already patrolling inside the patch, making sure all security measures to prevent the stealing of food were in place. A nicer but still strict Peacekeeper by the name of Darwin checked the girls in on his sleek computer as they passed him, and another gave each of the girls a lightweight bag to use for carrying the strawberries they picked. Nerissa gave her lunch to another Peacekeeper; unless lunches were checked in with them, they thought the food inside was stolen, even if that type of food was not grown in that field.

Trin sighed in her head, not daring to do so aloud, out of fear of another smack to her face. Today the girls were harvesting strawberries, but only for three hours compared to their usual six. Trin and Nerissa split up, starting to pick strawberries in the same row but at two different ends.

As Trin did this tedious work, her mind was working too, faster than usual. Because the Peacekeepers still expected the workers to pick their normal amount of strawberries in half the time, and because Trin was terrified of being hit by a Peacekeeper again, she tried to mentally calculate how many rows the girls had to finish that day, and how much time they had to do it. Trin was not very scientifically oriented, but she came up with a ratio in a few minutes. She started picking the strawberries faster, occasionally pulling out a weed and passing over other plants that grew in the same patch, which surprisingly included tomatoes.

By 7:00, the sun was up and shining brightly, its heat bearing down on the workers who were already coated with sweat. Trin wiped her forehead as she saw the sun rise to the position of 7:30. She was tempted to roll up the legs of her overalls, but decided against it. There were too many insects – harmless and poisonous – around the plants, and the Peacekeepers found it "unsanitary" to have their overall legs rolled up. _Yet they allow workers to sweat all over the plants for six hours a day_, Trin complained in her head, almost ripping a strawberry plant and trying to avoid letting anything that would reveal her thoughts escape onto her face.

A Peacekeeper walked up behind Trin and pulled her shoulder back violently, making her face him. "I am going to be nice and let you off with a warning, but if you rip a plant again, I will have you lashed ten times in front of all the workers here as an example!" The man's voice was thick with a Capitol accent, and his words were sharp, threatening, and cacophonous. He glared at her harshly for another moment before letting go of her shoulder and walking away. Trin went back to work immediately, knowing that if she stopped to rub her shoulder for one second, she would probably be yelled at again.

Trin continued her work silently, picking the strawberries quickly and trying to ignore the pain in her shoulder that told her it was dislocated at the very least. A couple of times, Trin and Nerissa exchanged glances – Trin's of anger and Nerissa's of sympathy for Trin. But they continued working until 9:00, when the Peacekeeper who usually released them at noon released them early on this special day.

Nerissa grabbed Trin's hand and led her back to the entrance as usual. When they reached the Peacekeeper that Nerissa gave her lunch to, they stopped, as both had somehow forgotten that their workday was shorter.

"Excuse me, sir, but I forgot we were working a shorter shift today and brought my lunch with me. May I have it back?" Nerissa asked the man politely, giving her bag of strawberries to Trin.

"Didn't you hear us yesterday? We said don't bring a lunch. So you don't bring a lunch. You didn't bring a lunch. You brought me a snack, and a terrible one at that," the man said, making a face at Nerissa.

Nerissa was in shock. "But that was my -," she started. Before she could finish, the Peacekeeper smacked her across the face in the same way another did to Trin months earlier when she was caught stealing a strawberry.

"It was what?" said the Peacekeeper in a mock-innocent tone. Trin tried to hide her anger inside, and manage to pick up Nerissa, who had fallen to the ground when she was smacked, while still holding the bags of strawberries. Trin gave the bags to a different Peacekeeper, and led Nerissa out of the patch and into the street.

"Are you okay?" Trin finally asked once they were out of the patch, a few hundred meters from any Peacekeepers, breaking her taciturn routine. She could not talk to Nerissa earlier, or attempt to make her situation better without making things worse for both of them.

"I-I guess," Nerissa stuttered, the part of her face that was hit smarting. "It doesn't matter anyways. I'm not dying, I still have to go."

Trin, who had tried to block the reason for their short day out of her head all morning, let out a small groan with Nerissa's reminder of their grim circumstances.

Today was the Reaping. And if what happened that morning counted for anything, the odds were most definitely not in their favour.

**AN: Long time, no story! I did NaNoWriMo in November, and that kind of took up a lot of my life, so I kind of have an excuse, even though it was months ago. A few things about this fic: (1) it is canon, (2) most chapters will be 1000-3000 words long, (3) this is a collection of snapshots of Trin's life that create a story, (4) this chapter is more descriptive than the others will be, and I promise they will have more action, and (5) I will need help with coming up with muttations for this story (And a setting for the actual games) so…. PM me?**

****PS If this chapter is terrible or something, tell me to rewrite it (or blame Sarah [SlytherclawHP], who read it over for me). I bumped my head today and I _think_ I don't have any damage….and I wrote most of this chapter after that. ****

**You know you want to press that "Review" button…**


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